@joshualongbrake joshualongbrake.com 2063990645 email
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We were at our bar, a pronoun I use with humility and pride. It’s not ours but we know the owners and the bartenders and they know us. Jimmy is almost always working and now that Kirby and I go there two times a week he’s begun, per my request, choosing what I’ll drink without me asking. Give me a beer, Jimmy and he picks what he likes. I don’t know anything about beer and I don’t care much to learn. I’d rather glean from his experience and I’ve yet to be disappointed. One less thing to think about.
Fischman’s will not get featured in some expensive quarterly magazine for young adults, no low contrast photos of beautiful people in tight pants, suspenders and hair product that molds hair to look as though there’s no hair product. No, the only hair product in Fischman’s is sweat and the only suspenders are holding up the heavy pants of firemen and postal workers, Cliff Clavins at the edges of the bar. Actors and improvisers and comedians from the theater down the street are there nightly, never performing but always performing. They all walk around the world thinking that an invisible microphone floats in front of them. Courage! I listen; it’s a gift. Their irreverent jokes are sacred, for everything that was once called holy is no longer holy; all we have now is the profane. If that is true then these people are the new saints. If there is a bar of mercy and forgiveness for all walks of life, it’s this one.
Fischman’s is fodder for some expensive quarterly magazine for young adults.
We were there on a Monday night, something afforded by being married to a woman with a mutual admiration for going out for a drink and a laugh. Her love for Fischman’s correlates to her love for me, her husband with a uniform of the same pants and same flannel shirts, despite the weather, because he loves not having to think about what to wear. The consistency is calming, a blanket or memory of the womb; she understands.
There’s a digital jukebox on the wood-paneled wall, one that streams music and even has an app for phones so you can play music without getting up from the bar. How about that! I put in $5 each night we’re there, chalk it up in the budget as an extra drink, and ritually put on 5 or 6 Waits tunes, always Hoist that Rag, The Earth Died Screaming, Make it Rain, Come On Up to the House, and maybe something from Small Change if I want to channel the beat poets. So we’re there and I put on the music from my phone and sip from my glass of Maker’s Mark on the rocks (Jimmy was off that night). First tune plays and my soul has settled. Second tune plays and cuts out after 30 seconds, I chalk it up to computers. Third tune plays, same thing after 30 seconds. Fourth tune, same.
Kyle was with us, an actor from the theater down the road and a friend. He asked Dawn the bartender if she knew what was going on with the music.
“Was that you all who were playing Tom Waits? I’m so sorry! I changed it after I looked around trying to figure out who was doing it. It’s not those guys over there; they don’t know how to work the machine. That guy is basically asleep. You all looked too young. I thought it was someone from their home pulling a prank on their phone.”
She gave me $3 compensation and apologized until we left. It’s alright, Dawn. We’ll be back.
there’s nothin in the world
that you can do
you gotta come on up to the house
and you been whipped by the forces
that are inside you
come on up to the house
well you’re high on top
of your mountain of woe
come on up to the house
well you know you should surrender
but you can’t let go
you gotta come on up to the house -
CFR 003
Audio Recording
Congregation: United Center (Chicago Bulls vs. Miami Heat)
Duration: 28 seconds
Time: 6:51 pm CST
Location: Chicago, IL
Date: May 13 2013
Participants: 21,990 sports patrons, Kyle Zornes, Nancy O’Connell, athletes, referees, audio file of drum beat, can of beer
Notes: recorded in the last row of the United Center, recording device facing southeast
Recorded by: JL -
We’re not pregnant (relax relatives) but all of our friends are having kids because all of our friends are around 30 years old and at 30 everyone’s instagram turns into babygram (babies get auto-faves) and sometimes when we visit our friends I bring a few cameras and take some photos. When Kirb and I have kids one day (relax relatives) I am going to turn into a serious baby photographer of serious babies (just our babies) (relax).
This photo is of Amos Stringer. He was born on March 4 2013 and at 2 months he weighs 647 pounds.
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David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005 (part 2)
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CFR 002
Audio Recording
Congregation: St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Duration: 5 minutes
Time: 11:51 AM PST
Location: Seattle, WA
Date: April 28 2013
Participants: Clergy, Vestry, Parishioners, Choir
Notes: recorded in 2nd to last pew, recording device facing north directly beneath male parishioner
Recorded by: JL -
CFR 001
Audio Recording
Congregation: Jehovah’s Witness
Duration: 33 seconds
Time: 8:18 pm CST
Location: Chicago, IL
Date: May 3 2013
Participants: Pastor, Church Congregation, Church Band, Kirby Longbrake, bag of potato chips
Notes: recorded in domestic space, 30 feet from source through open window, facing south
Recorded by: JL -
Jay & Amos Stringer
Seattle, WA
April 26 2013 -
I hadn’t seen or heard from Tom in about a year and a half after I’d moved from Seattle to Chicago. We both knew the other was out there somewhere, Tom and Kate having their second child and I got married, but distance played its usual role and we hadn’t called each other to chat. It turns out that during that time Tom had gone from the guy I had known him to be, 6’1” 275 lbs. (pushing three hundy as Tom would say) to a lean 175 lbs., still 6’1”, but with long hair, a good Seattteite.
Just before my move to Chicago Tom and I had a few conversations about running. I’ve been running since college, not competitively, more masochistically, and it intrigued Tom and I’m sure brought up questions in him regarding my mental health, but we’d known each other long enough that he was no longer frightened by some of my more off-kilter life choices. I didn’t make much of our chat about running, but it turns out Tom did.
He sent me a photo this past November of himself after losing 100 lbs. and I genuinely did not recognize who was in the photo. He had run off the weight along with a meticulous diet. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “I could not run up the stairs after my boy without feeling tired, but I changed all of that nonsense.”
And so on and so on, more conversations and congratulations, which he was and is due, and in January I asked if he’d be interested in running a race with me. “I’ll fly out there and we can run it together, a celebration.” He said yes and we signed up for the Capitol Peak 55k Ultramarathon just southwest of Olympia, WA in Capitol Forest, his first ultramarathon. His longest race before this was a 13.1 miles.
Tom, really, you astonish me. I do not believe I have the discipline and courage to change my life in the ways you’ve so faithfully committed to. Well done, well done. Thanks for running with me, for bringing your camera on the run, and thanks for watching out for other runners when I pooped near that bridge. And thanks for the toilet paper.
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Carl Jividen, my grandfather
92 years old, WWII veteran
Londonderry, Ohio
February 2013 -
These days keep showing up, every year and more often than that, and they take or make new meaning at each appearance. I think about them every day, multiple times a day, so much so that at times they lose their singularity or gain a timelessness. I don’t know; I rarely know anything, but here they are again.
At our Holy Saturday service at St. John’s our rector Kara asked me if I’d read the Gospel reading in the liturgy. Someone read from Job, we all read the psalm together, and another person read from 1 Peter. Kara handed me her bible, I took a breath, and at the moment I began to speak the first word my alarm on my phone sounded, three ringing deep bells, a reminder for me at nine, noon, and three every day that God interrupts, even, and especially, on the day between the days.
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You’ve wondered for years where you would be when you turned 30; I know because you’ve mentioned it a few times. You have hopeful eyes, an optimist on the poisoned blue sapphire we all call home, and though there are dark days where there is no tomorrow, you’ve always recovered quickly, the next day somehow being brighter than the one before. What a tenderhearted disposition, and how much more for an artist.
Did you know that when you were 30 you’d be a working actor? Did you know that you’d book the lead in a play in Chicago? What is remarkable is that you did, or at least you knew you could and you knew that you were never going to quit pursuing a life as an actor. What you didn’t know is that you’d get offered a job as the host of a news show in Chicago, a job with high visibility and a generous salary, but you’d turn it down because they couldn’t put a price on a job that would keep you from doing what you love. You said no and they were frustrated and you were right. We can make you into Kelly Ripa but you wanted to be Kirby O’Connell and for that you deserve more than what the salary they offered could ever provide. Some people thought you were crazy, and they are more right than they know because it takes a little crazy to be yourself and not be who others say you should be. “Careful or you’ll should all over yourself.”
You are 30 with the playfulness of a child and the wisdom of the old. You don’t pretend you’re 24 and you’re not ready to be 40; you are exactly where you are, a quirky and kind and slightly off-kilter woman who is loved by her family and friends and especially by her husband. You make good decisions and bad decisions and you light up every room you enter, but you don’t notice because you think that’s how happy people are all day long. You married a man that reminds you that most people are miserable twits but you smile and tell him he’s wrong but it’s ok to be wrong and to stop watching so much Woody Allen. That’s why I’m here, you say, to show you that things are ok and that we’re all trying our best.
Do not stop taking risks and do not listen to people who tell you to take the easy path. They are twits. Keep those tender eyes open and you’ll figure it out, whatever it is. Right now it’s being 30 and celebrating your birthday and going to dinner and a play with a man who thinks you’re absolutely beautiful. You’ve wondered all these years where you would be when you turned 30, and it turns out that you’re here, just like you were there when you were there, and just like you will be wherever you will be years from now. You were and are and will always be Kirby, and that is a good, good thing.
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